1949threepence

You can easily see the hairline scratches as a result of the cleaning, but the plug is undetectable to the naked eye (on the pic at any rate)

thats the trouble isnt it?......we all know theyre disappointing, we all know theyre overgraded, and the photos just seem a token gesture, i cant help feeling i would buy more from them if it was fairly graded ef rather than bu, or vf rather than ef. some dealers do it right though, just bought this from Richard at world coins.....the pics sold it. Really nice coin, ski. A few very minor blemishes on the King's head, but apart from that, pretty near perfect. I can understand why you snapped it up. With regard to the Ingrams ~ yes: they would probably shift more stock at a faster rate if they were a bit more realistic with prices and grading, and upgraded their picture quality somewhat. It's those very aspects, plus negotiability on price, which has led me to develop a liking and respect for Colin Cooke (or more accurately these days, Neil Paisley and Lee Brownson)

I'd keep it as it is. Great shame about the large blemishes both sides, but that's old coins that were in circulation a very long time, for you. Apart from that , it's actually not too bad a coin. If you try and do things to it, you risk damaging it still further. You can say you've got an 1875H and maybe upgrade at some future point.

ive emailed richard several times requesting better pictures and all you get is the same ones as the site, shame really because you get the feeling as pointed out here.....the pics are trying to hide the true grade. ski Michael and Rendel Ingram do have one or two nice coins on their website, but on the whole, I find them a bit disappointing. Some of the coins seem overgraded and definitely overpriced. That said, there is one coin on there which I like the look of, and may make a punt on at some point, assuming it's not gone by then.

With a mintage of just over a million, and a Freeman rarity of 13, that's a really neat purchase, Bob Are you keeping it in the slab ?

I can see that sale going tits up

Keep it up, Patrick. You have a great attitude to life. Study hard and get qualified, don't waste your money on smoking or drinking, don't lose sight of coin collecting, and don't get led too far astray by girls. Good luck !!! Just as a matter of interest, how do your classmates and friends react to you being interested in coin collecting ? (or haven't you told them) I know when I first became interested and mentioned it to a few, they couldn't get their heads round it and stared blankly at me.

I use the vcoins search function which works pretty well, rather than by dealer or category. But I think only a few UK dealers are represented there and agree more would be good. I also find it strange when dealers use a website like a mailing list. Now when I collected milled coins I'd risk buying from a description in a mailing list. But with hammered coins I need a photo. OK, it takes time and I guess bandwidth. But I'm no longer prepared to buy sight unseen. For a start, I'm much more likely to pick up interesting details than most dealers will notice, but mostly because 'eye appeal' is an essential element in hammered coins. You can have two very similarly graded coins, but one might be much more appealing to me than the other for reasons that I'd find difficult to explain. As for people who have photos but don't post them or who just have thumbnails, well, I've tired of emailing dealers asking for pictures. Now if there aren't any or they are unclear I tend to just move on I'm afraid .. That's very true, Tom ~ or as a compromise they just have pics of their best coins, and nothing else. As far as on line dealers are concerned, good photography of their stock is pretty obviously essential for optimum take up. If you can't be there in person, as with a shop, then you need to view the item in other ways. I wish someone would tell the SW's biggest dealer Glenn Ogden from whom I've bought coins at fairs before. Now I'm restricted to buying online, I've had to rule him out just because he doesn't see fit to put up pictures. I took him up on this a while back and got a really rude email from his wife. Why do people react so aggressively to constructive suggestions, which are just as much for their benefit as anyone else's ?

I use the vcoins search function which works pretty well, rather than by dealer or category. But I think only a few UK dealers are represented there and agree more would be good. I also find it strange when dealers use a website like a mailing list. Now when I collected milled coins I'd risk buying from a description in a mailing list. But with hammered coins I need a photo. OK, it takes time and I guess bandwidth. But I'm no longer prepared to buy sight unseen. For a start, I'm much more likely to pick up interesting details than most dealers will notice, but mostly because 'eye appeal' is an essential element in hammered coins. You can have two very similarly graded coins, but one might be much more appealing to me than the other for reasons that I'd find difficult to explain. As for people who have photos but don't post them or who just have thumbnails, well, I've tired of emailing dealers asking for pictures. Now if there aren't any or they are unclear I tend to just move on I'm afraid .. That's very true, Tom ~ or as a compromise they just have pics of their best coins, and nothing else. As far as on line dealers are concerned, good photography of their stock is pretty obviously essential for optimum take up. If you can't be there in person, as with a shop, then you need to view the item in other ways.

Love it

even fewer have their own song and video Very true ski. I had to laugh when I heard this bit from the song:- I don't think anything could be further from the truth with all coin dealers, including Michael. Incidentally, I'm not sure why they used an actor to portray him, and not the man himself. Could it be that the jovial looking guy with a drink in his hand, didn't quite project the image they were after ?

Very disappointing for you obviously, Dave. It's easy to be fooled with some pics, and this is maybe an object lesson in trying to get a detailed large one before you part with any money. Good luck in getting your money back, anyway. No respect at all, actually. But definitely a shedload of condescension.

The format of v coins is very good, but the site is rather thematic. Ideally something like that with all on line UK dealers would be very useful, and no doubt draw in a lot of trade for those dealers. Incidentally, there are still quite a lot of dealers who don't even have an e mail address, let alone a website. Which is a great pity.

Just think also of the premium placed on an 1897 penny with a raised dot between the O and N of ONE, not due to an error in design, but simply to die damage.

Oh FFS ~ there'll be posts from multi billionnaires in Nigeria next, offering £3 million in exchange for a £10K registration fee How many people on forums do they think will actually fall for this tripe ?

You could do, if below book value it will probably shift. Especially if you employ the common tactic of "Spink quote £400 in UNC". It's very noticeable, however, that overpriced BIN's usually sit there unmoved for months, until the seller decides to lower the price, and even then......often nothing. The best prices seem to be made on middle of the market, high quality stock, which starts at 99p with no reserve. In auction, conversely, high end, high quality stock usually falls well short of dealer prices, and ends in what must surely be severe disappointment for the seller. The worst tactic is to start an auction on a middle of the market high grade coin at a price which is above what most punters are willing to initially punt on, but below market value. I've cashed in on them and been the only buyer at the end. Very often they remain overlooked. Incidentally, I think that the range and quality of e bay stock has deteriorated significantly this year. Only one of the last 6 coins I've bought, has been from e bay, and that one was part of an unsold collection which Colin Cooke had ~ in desperation possibly ~ put there for a quick sale to shift the stock.

Probably worth a few bob.......

I'm getting "coin search error - missing criteria" when I try to look at any coins. But the site itself is still there. To be honest, the lion's share of the coins on that site were the (in my opinion) somewhat overpriced and generously graded coins of Rendel, who has his own site anyway.

As Peck says, many of them are out of true, but I've never seen a obverse/reverse misalignment of 45 degrees. That's huge. More usually 5 to 10 degrees.

The 1893/2 penny is so difficult to spot that it is no wonder that it went unnoticed for so long. I can be shown a close-up of one and STILL probably won't see it. I don't even know what we're supposed to be looking for on an 1893/2, as I've never seen one. I know there is a pic of one in Michael Gouby's "The British Bronze Penny 1860 to 1901†Victoria specialised edition book, but I haven't got it, so I've never seen one. I also know there are different font 3's for that year, which add to the confusion. It would be very interesting to see one, and to be aware exactly what to look for. The threes look totally different on the two that I have.

I heard an awful story from a woman at work a few months ago, after telling her I was a coin collector. Don't know how true it is, but I've no reason to doubt it, as very plausible. Apparently her brother, who now lives in Devizes, is an avid collector, but after he got married, his wife's sister came to live with them for a few months, when she split up from her then husband. Anyway the story is that while she was at home one day, and they were both out at work, she found this guy's coin collection and started polishing the ones she thought looked dirty, with brasso ~ trying, but singularly failing, to be helpful. Obviously, as soon as he found out he hit the roof and she had left the house for good within a couple of hours !!! Well you'd be mortified, wouldn't you

There's no mystery. You have a bad day at work, find an old sixpence and lob it into the blank hopper. Et voila. Right.....of course, it's so obvious

Robbing bar stewards. The whole banking system needs better regulated, but just like goverment, they do as they please, rip off customers with a £35 bank charge for going a £1 overdrawn, charge £30 to make an EU bank transaction, its free in Germany. Just shows how much the UK public are ripped off by banks. I read the other day Mercyn King forced the Barclays Chief out because he was'nt going freely............... There will always be complaints about bank charges until the true cost of a service is reflected in the fee structure. Nothing in life comes for free, every action in a business has a cost. If the banks would stop cross-subsidies and make people pay for services received, the cost of going overdrawn for example would drop. Everyone likes the idea of "free banking" just as everyone thinks the customer is ripped off when going overdrawn. One is just the quid pro quo for the other. The fairest solution would be for everyone who uses the banking industry to pay for their accurately costed services, but then that would mean everyone complaining because the banks are charging THEM for daring to write out a cheque, or use the cash dispenser, or make a transaction, or whatever. With no free lunch on the table - people will just moan whatever the situation. What you're forgetting though, is that we are a captive audience. The vast majority of working people, and even those on benefits nowadays, have no choice but to use the banks. None of us can opt to have our wages paid in notes and coins each week, via a brown envelope, as I understand used to be the case many decades ago. We have to be paid via banks....... ,,,,,and newsflash, banks are not user friendly. Literally every single act they perpetrate, however they dress it up, is profit driven, wholly for their own convenience, and anything but for the well being of their customers. Moreover, as far no free lunch, yes, you're right. But the up front charges of banks are out of all proportion to the real cost. The stories about people going a few pence into the red for one day, and getting stung for a £35 fee, are real. They aren't Daily Mail hype, as I can duly testify. They continue to close branches considered to be non cost effective, despite the adverse effects incurred to customers in the towns concerned. Not everybody does their banking via the internet, and need the reassurance of face to face contact, especially elderly people. Again, this is 100% based on their own convenience. They couldn't give a toss about their customers. In some places they haven't even had the courtesy to leave a free ATM. You mentioned cheques, another old fashioned valuable facility they would like to abolish for their own convenience. Fortunately this is one area where they've found themselves squashed, and the cheque, used less, but still highly useful in certain situations, will remain beyond 2018. At least it might mean that fewer tradesmen get paid in cash and thereby avoid income tax, something that will no doubt please those politicians who now seem to be regularly offering up sanctimonious lectures about tax avoidance/evasion, whilst staying strangely silent about when the billions of bailout money will be repaid to the taxpayer (this year, next year, sometime never, probably. So I say, roll on the challenger banks. Maybe they will act with more customer care principles in mind.....well, we can always hope

lol ~ "fixed" being the operative word

You just wonder how the hell that happened